Summary

• AMD's Athlon 1000 and Athlon 64 3000+ were pivotal in its early dominance against Intel.
• Intel's Core 2 Duo series and later, the Core i5-2500K nearly ended all competition in the industry.
• AMD's Zen-based Ryzen CPUs revolutionized the market, with the Ryzen 7 1700 and Ryzen 9 3950X becoming crowd favorites.
• Intel debuted an innovative architecture with the Alder Lake series, and the Core i9-12900K gave Intel its crown back.

Unless you're seeking the highest framerates possible or want to build a powerful workstation, even the best CPUs aren't something that most people get very excited about. Sure, it's cool to see a lot of cores and high clock speeds, but most of us just want to play games, and you don't need anything too special for that. Having said that, this is exactly why we can tell when a truly great CPU comes along; it gives us a reason to get excited about a component that usually isn't as important.

Considering that the earliest CPUs came out decades ago, it's difficult to select the top 50 best chips from among them, let alone the best seven. For the sake of consistency, I'm going to focus on consumer-oriented chips that have come out since the late 90s (which covers anything we'd consider modern). However, many of these picks are also influenced by their data center and mobile counterparts, which I will be discussing. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it will cover some of the biggest turning points in CPU history.

1 AMD Athlon 1000

AMD breaks the GHz barrier

The beginning of the modern era of desktop CPUs started in the late 90s as Intel launched its Pentium II processors and AMD its K6 chips. These were some of the very first CPUs to be reviewed on venerable websites like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware, made possible thanks to the cutting-edge technology of the internet and the fact that people could buy individual computer components at retail rather than needing to buy a whole computer.

Intel and AMD were also just a few years removed from a pivotal legal battle that eventually decided in AMD's favor, granting the company the right to make its own x86 CPUs. AMD went from making Intel chips for devices like IBM's Personal Computer to designing and manufacturing its own processors in direct competition with Intel's. AMD CPUs were generally priced lower than Intel's in order to be competitive, and eventually, AMD decided it was time to go for the gold.

Intel's Pentium III 650 couldn't match the Athlon 650, an indication that AMD's architectural design was better than Intel's.

In the summer of 1999, AMD introduced the very first of its Athlon series of CPUs, named after the ancient Greek word for "contest." Pitted against Intel's Pentium III chips, which came out just a few months before, Anandtech found that it was the Athlon 650 (clocked at 650MHz) that was the new CPU champion. Interestingly, Intel's Pentium III 650 (also clocked at 650MHz) couldn't match the Athlon 650, an indication that AMD's architectural design was better than Intel's.

For the next few months, AMD and Intel went back and forth and kept one-upping each other with higher-clocked Athlons and Pentiums, racing to break the GHz barrier. In the end, however, it was AMD's Athlon 1000 that crossed the finish line in early 2000. Intel's Pentium III 1GHz launched just two days later, though it did have the satisfaction of being the better chip. Still, the Athlon became a legendary chip that put AMD on the board.

2 AMD Athlon 64 3000+

The future is AMD64

Pretty soon after AMD and Intel broke through the GHz barrier, it was Intel's opportunity to turn up the heat. The company launched its first Pentium 4 CPU in late 2000, with its underlying architecture, NetBurst, designed for the express purpose of hitting high clock speeds, and each new generation of NetBurst would yield higher frequencies than the last. This ensured Intel wasn't going to be taken by surprise in the clock-speed race as it had been with Athlon.

At the same time, however, there was a new race: the one for 64-bit computing. The x86 architecture at this point was only 32-bit, and obviously, 32 ones and zeroes can store much less data than 64. To this end, Intel introduced the 64-bit Itanium architecture for the emerging server CPU market in 2001. But there were two problems: Itanium was only for servers and never came to desktops, and Itanium was not x86 and thus couldn't run x86 software. These two factors created an excellent opportunity for a certain ambitious Intel rival. To put that into perspective, some 20 years later, x86 software is still important for desktop and server CPUs to support.

The company was developing CPUs with a 64-bit version of x86, called AMD64.

Although AMD wasn't launching earth-shattering Athlons from 2000 to 2002, there was a good reason. The company was developing CPUs with a 64-bit version of x86, called AMD64. The Athlon 64 series introduced the AMD64 architecture to the mainstream, which it debuted with the Athlon 64 3200+ and Athlon 64 FX-51 towards the end of 2003. However, the real star of the show was the Athlon 64 3000+, which launched just a few months later at $200, half the price of both the 3200+ and Intel's 32-bit Pentium 4 3.2GHz. In its review, Anandtech found that the 3000+ only slightly trailed both CPUs, making it a great value and an affordable 64-bit chip.

But it wasn't just about the desktop. AMD's 64-bit Opteron server CPUs (which made it to market before Athlon 64) had a significant advantage against Itanium thanks to being x86. The end result was AMD capturing over 25% market share in the server market. Athlon 64 also did quite well against Pentium 4, which floundered as expected frequency gains failed to materialize, dooming the NetBurst architecture which had sacrificed important features for those nonexistent clock speed gains. While Athlon 64 and the original Opteron rank among AMD's best CPUs, Pentium 4 and Itanium are some of Intel's worst.

3 Intel Core 2 Duo E6300

Intel finally kills the Athlon

Intel was down on its luck. NetBurst sucked, Itanium wasn't working out, and AMD was racking up wins. The first thing Intel did to rectify this situation was to give OEMs like HP and Dell lots of money via rebates in exchange for using Intel's CPUs, which you might call a bribe. Although these rebates had dubious legality, they helped Intel maintain its traditional dominance and reversed AMD's gains in desktops and servers. But Intel couldn't keep giving these companies billions of dollars. It needed a brand-new CPU with a brand-new architecture.

Enter Intel's legendary Core architecture, which debuted in 2006 initially for laptops and then for desktops with the Core 2 series. Core was built from the ground up and was a substantial change from the old NetBurst architecture that traded instructions per clock (IPC) for clock speed gains. That didn't work out with NetBurst because clock speed gains significantly declined in the early to mid-2000s, so Core focused on IPC gains like AMD did with Athlon. Intel wanted to do it better than AMD, of course, and indeed it did.

Easily the best CPU in the lineup was the Core 2 Duo E6300, a $180 chip that was pretty decent at its stock 1.86GHz frequency and could be overclocked to nearly 2.6GHz

There were quite a few heavy hitters from the Core 2 series, such as the quad-core Core 2 Extreme X6800, which won literally every single benchmark in Anandtech's testing, and the Core 2 Quad Q6660, a higher-end quad-core that was great for multithreaded workloads. But easily the best overall CPU was the Core 2 Duo E6300, a $180 chip that was pretty decent at its stock 1.86GHz frequency and could be overclocked to nearly 2.6GHz, which put it on par with much higher-end Intel and AMD CPUs.

Core 2 wiped the floor with Athlon, a brand that had caused Intel a lot of trouble since it debuted in 1999. Although it's hard to say if Intel really deserved to reverse all of AMD's market share gains across the CPU market, at least Core 2 beat Athlon fair and square in the benchmarks. Intel wasn't content with getting even though. It wanted total victory.

4 Intel Core i5-2500K

The one that nearly made AMD go bankrupt

Over the next five years, Intel was outdoing AMD both technologically and financially. AMD attempted to compete by launching its Phenom series processors, but Intel's Core architecture was simply too good, especially since Intel was alternating between architectural improvements and manufacturing process improvements every generation. Intel called this "tick-tock," with ticks being process upgrades and tocks being architecture updates. In 2011, two ticks and two tocks after Core 2, Intel was ready to bring down the hammer on AMD.

Intel's second-generation Sandy Bridge processors weren't a radical change over Core 2. For the mainstream, Intel still only offered four cores (six-core Extreme chips were reserved for the top-end LGA 2011 platform), but these were some very refined and powerful cores. In single-threaded performance, the flagship Core i7-2600K was about 25% faster than the Core i7-980X Extreme and a whopping 50% faster than AMD's Phenom II X6 1100T BE. The 2600K did lose ground against the 980X in multithreaded work since it had two more cores, but it was still faster than the 1100T, which was also a six-core CPU.

The Core i5-2500K is still fondly remembered, even a decade after it came out.

The most famous member of that second generation was the Core i5-2500K though, a CPU that is still fondly remembered even a decade after it came out. The only thing it really lacked compared to the 2600K was hyperthreading (which wasn't very important in 2011) and a little bit of clock speed. At $200, it was a much better deal than the $300 2600K, which was only around 10%-20% faster. To Anandtech, the 2500K and the whole Sandy Bridge family was a "no-brainer."

Sandy Bridge was also the beginning of a new era in CPUs. Intel had been in the lead for years with Core, and Sandy Bridge just put AMD even further behind. When its FX Bulldozer CPUs came out later in 2011, the awe of Intel's achievement was replaced with anxiety over AMD's failures. Bulldozer was an awful CPU, one of AMD's worst. In its review, Anandtech speculated that without a competitive AMD to keep Intel in check, consumers would be left with locked-down CPUs with poor value. And, of course, that's exactly how it turned out.

5 AMD Ryzen 7 1700

An incredible comeback from the brink of ruin

The expectation in 2011 was that AMD would refine its Bulldozer CPUs on an annual cadence, much like Intel did. However, AMD was in such terrible financial shape that it could only deliver a second generation of FX CPUs in 2012, and from then on, it only released new APUs for the budget segment. AMD effectively exited the market and left Intel to its own devices. This resulted in Intel keeping the quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 at roughly $200 and $300, respectively, while Intel's margins got fatter and the performance gains got smaller. It was total stagnation.

However, AMD didn't quit the CPU game for good. Pretty soon after Bulldozer launched to critical infamy, the company got to work on a totally new architecture. With a targeted IPC gain of 40% over Bulldozer (an insane goal for a single generation) and up to eight cores, Zen promised to be the savior of gamers and enthusiasts who were sick of Intel's high prices and the general lack of competitive inspiration.

The hype train was reaching never-before-seen speeds, and AMD played into it really hard.

CPUs normally don't get people too excited, especially the ones that were coming out from 2012 to 2016, but Zen was different. The hype train was reaching never-before-seen speeds, and AMD played into it really hard. It named the reveal presentation for Zen "New Horizon," and even got The Game Awards' Geoff Keighley on stage. Keep in mind this was for a CPU, not a GPU, and from AMD, the company that had floundered for years and almost went bankrupt. But people wanted AMD to get that win and re-energize the CPU market.

Branded as Ryzen and slated for an early 2017 launch, the desktop version of Zen promised great multithreaded performance and adequate gaming performance, and it delivered on that without crashing the hype train. I was building a PC around that time and was elated to get the 6-core Ryzen 5 1600 for my build. The Ryzen 7 1700, although not the flagship, was critically acclaimed as it offered eight cores for $330 and could be overclocked for a little extra performance. It just about matched Intel's $1100 Core i7-6900K in multithreaded workloads, too. The game was back on, and it was again Intel's turn to start making some key mistakes.

6 AMD Ryzen 9 3950X

Redefining what a flagship really is

Even though AMD was pretty happy with how successful Zen turned out, Intel was still looming. The company's 10nm CPUs were somewhat delayed due to manufacturing issues, but AMD wasn't taking any chances, and it designed future generations of Zen to be able to compete with those chips. But when Intel launched its first 10nm chip in 2018, one thing became very clear: the 10nm was broken and wasn't going to be ready for a long time. AMD was expecting an even fight, but it started to look like it would be very one-sided.

One of the innovations AMD invested in was chiplets. Instead of putting everything into one piece of silicon (also called a die), the cores would get their own die and everything else would be on another. By building CPUs this way, AMD would only need to create a few unique chips, and adding more cores would be super easy. Additionally, for the next generation of Zen (codenamed Zen 2), AMD also wanted to use TSMC's next-generation 7nm process, which was supposed to compete with Intel's 10nm, and by extension would be much better than Intel's 14nm, which the company had to use instead.

The eight-core Core i9-9900K had to go up against the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X and 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, and they made the 9900K look mid-range.

The end result was Ryzen 3000, which launched in 2019, the 50th anniversary of AMD's founding. Ryzen 3000 not only evened the score in gaming and single-threaded workloads but absolutely annihilated Intel in multithreaded ones. The eight-core Core i9-9900K had to go up against the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X and 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, and they made the 9900K look mid-range. We also can't forget AMD's EPYC Rome CPUs, which had up to 64 cores. Intel's competing Xeons only came with up to 28 cores, so you can imagine how things went there.

AMD had expected a tough fight with 10nm chips, and instead, it got to recreate its own Sandy Bridge moment against beleaguered and old 14nm-based CPUs. AMD's hard work had finally paid off, and the Ryzen 3000 series received universal accolades. But, just like with Sandy Bridge, what followed Ryzen 3000 wasn't so great.

7 Intel Core i9-12900K

Intel's long-awaited return to the competition

It shouldn't come as a surprise that without Intel launching good CPUs, AMD would start trying to extract more money out of people. Its Ryzen 5000 series came out in late 2020 and introduced a bitter $50 price increase all across the board. That meant the six-core Ryzen 5 5600X was 20% faster than the Ryzen 5 3600X for at best 20% more performance. AMD also decided to only launch four models of the Ryzen 5000 series, with the 5600X being the cheapest at $300, and the Ryzen 7 5800X the second cheapest at an unbelievable $450.

Meanwhile, Intel was making slow but steady progress on fixing 10nm. In 2019, it launched its Ice Lake mobile chips, which were only quad-cores and were barely better than 14nm equivalents, but it was progress. 2020 saw the introduction of Tiger Lake, another improvement, but they still only had quad-cores. But finally, at the very end of 2021, Intel was proud to launch 10nm CPUs that were actually worthy of the desktop.

Alder Lake, branded as 12th-generation chips, brought several new things to the table. It was 10nm and had a brand-new architecture, but also used two different types of cores: performance (P) and efficiency (E) cores. It's basically the same thing Apple and other ARM CPU designers do with their chips, but it had never been done before on the desktop. It wasn't clear how well this would work out, and I myself was quite skeptical.

Intel thankfully proved everyone wrong and miraculously got back into first place with its Core i9-12900K.

But on launch day, Intel thankfully proved everyone wrong and miraculously got back into first place with its Core i9-12900K. Sporting eight P-cores and eight E-cores, it was much faster than AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X in both single-threaded and multithreaded workloads, and it was a decent bit faster in gaming too. It was also cheaper than the 5950X, which was shocking coming from Intel.

The entire 12th Gen lineup was great, in general, except for their high power consumption. While AMD had been content to just launch four models in 2020 and leave it at that, Intel launched tons of CPUs to cover the entire market within months. In its haste to respond to a suddenly competitive Intel, AMD slashed prices and launched some really awful budget CPUs that needed price cuts from day one. AMD used up much of the goodwill it had built over the years, but for the first time in a long time, things were finally balancing out.

Competition continues to persist in CPUs, and the field is getting bigger

Today, Intel is on its 14th Gen chips, and AMD is on its Ryzen 7000 series. There are pros and cons for both, with Intel offering great value and AMD having better efficiency and upgradability. It looks like Intel might be slipping again as its 7nm/Intel 4 processor still isn't ready, and because the Meteor Lake chips that are actually using it are laptop-only. Fortunately though, we probably aren't in store for another period of almost no competition. Things are in a good place and hopefully will be for the foreseeable future. It'll be interesting to see how the Zen 5 vs. Arrow Lake battle plays out in late 2024.

There are more big changes on the horizon when it comes to CPUs. ARM, which has largely been confined to mobile phones, is gaining momentum in servers, laptops, and even desktops. Apple's M-series chips are especially impressive and definitely deserve an honorable mention here. RISC-V is also a rising star in the CPU market, and although it hasn't made a massive impact, it talks a big game. I think we're still far from ARM and RISC-V CPUs duking it out with x86 on equal footing in PCs and servers, but I have no doubt that it will eventually happen.